Yea that was what I read, I've actually been following stuff like this for years, 90% of the earths dry surface cannot be traversed by the present mechanical means without great effort or improvements (roads), walking robots or transport is the next step. The military quietly still uses pack animals in parts of the world where they need to, buddy of mine said they used a lot of donkeys in Afghanistan because the infrastructure there can't handle modern vehicles. These robots could be used by other entities but like you said they are too loud for patrols.

They could also be used for space exploration. Send a bunch of them to a planet that is inhospitable to humans and use them to start colonization. They could also use them for mining hazardous area's of earth.